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| Long - "Dragon" |
Westerners have long depicted dragons as big reptiles with razor-sharp teeth and rough skin. They are fierce, fire-breathing creatures and associated with are something out of medieval times, with castles and moats and knights. They are monsters that terrorized the Earth, out of fairy tales.
The Chinese worship of dragons goes back to ancient times. With limited knowledge of nature and often helpless against a harsh and changing environment, many clans and tribes saw dragons as a powerful totem that granted supernatural powers protecting them from harm and providing them with luck.
Initially, the Chinese dragon's appearance also varied from region to region, as they were based on animals that people encountered
The dragon could look like a horse, a cow, a snake or even a fish, folklore reveals.
The image of the Chinese dragon was not fixed until the Song Dynasty (960-1279), when famed artist Guo Ruoxu produced a detailed depiction of the animal in his seminal book The Record of Illustration and Traditional Chinese Painting.
The dragon is a combination of nine different creatures. It has a deer's horns, horse's head, turtle's eyes, snake's neck, fish scales, hawk talons, cow ears, tiger paws and a sea serpent's abdomen.
The long was also believed to possess a wide range of powers and abilities. It could speed across the skies and probe deep underground. It controlled nature, especially the crucial resources of water and rain that were indispensable to an agrarian society. Ordinary Chinese came up with ever more ways to show their affection and admiration for the sacred long. In areas prone to floods and other natural disasters, dragon temples were built to pray for good harvests and adequate rain.
Chinese people continued to imbue dragons with their imagination and made them ever more mighty, divine and benevolent.
They are as wild as the beasts of the Earth, as intelligent as humans - and as sacred as the gods.
In Chinese folklore, long is also a fearless fighter and can see into the future. Righteous and sometimes standing on the side of the people, it symbolizes fertility, beauty, longevity and all the hopes of the people.
Perhaps most obviously to Western visitors to China, the long is the symbol of the power of Chinese emperors. In feudal societies, the emperors considered themselves as "the real dragon and the son of heaven", and everything they used, from beds to robes, were labeled as belonging to these.
Dragon motifs were widely used as decorations for palace objects. The dragon's color, yellow, was reserved for the supreme ruler of the land. From the Song Dynasty, only emperors could use dragon patterns.
It became taboo for commoners to use the creatures or even draw pictures of them. That also meant that some rebels would deliberately take up dragon symbols to topple unpopular monarchs.
Many proverbs closely related to the dragon are still widely used. A typical one is wangzichenglong, which illustrates Chinese parents' wishes for their children to be "as perfect as the long".
Beloved Chinese foods have also been named after the dragon, including longyan (longan, after the dragon's eyes) and longxumian (or "dragon whisker" noodles).
Popularity for the Chinese dragon, which appears as the fifth sign in the zodiac, hits fever pitch during the Chinese Year of the Dragon - which falls in 2012.
To help usher in the new year, people across China and Taiwan are expected to hold dragon dances on the night of the 15th day of the first month in the Chinese lunar calendar. Crowds will throng performances where frenzied dancers will hold up elaborate dragon floats lit by lights.
Boat races during the Dragon Festival, which usually falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, are also expected to be especially regal during the Year of the Dragon.
People want their babies born during the Year of the Dragon. People born in this year are said to have a lot of charisma, wisdom and longevity.
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